PRESS RELEASE June 2024 For immediate release
It is a bumper year for the Fringe’s popular Spoken Word category with 18 entries, including the return of a number of well-loved Fringe veterans alongside exciting new performers.
History lovers will be spoiled for choice this year with reflections on subjects ranging from Ancient Greece to World War II. Island of Love from the Off-Off-Off-Broadway Company takes audiences to Cyprus, birthplace of Aphrodite, an island of beauty, divided by war. Award-winning writer Polis Loizou presents an intimate new show weaving biographical storytelling with mythology and folklore to explore his identity, family and complex motherland.
Jane Collier meanwhile travels back to Elizabethan England where the night before her execution, Mary Queen of Scots shares memories of the men in her life in Fotheringhay: Mary Queen of Scots and Men. Meanwhile Michael Gibson muses on the mystery of The Green Knight in his show On Truth & Untruth in Sir Gawain & The Green Knight, posing multiple questions including “What is this Green Knight?” and “Can he be trusted?”
Jumping forward in time, Joanne Crowther gives an entertaining talk about Titus Salt, one of the richest men in the land and Saltaire, UNESCO World Heritage Village in West Yorks. This interactive costumed talk is entitled Secrets + Scandal! Victorian Saltaire with Pollie.
Shirley Mann will take audiences on a journey to learn how the real women of the Second World War made their transition to becoming pilots, tractor drivers, policewomen, wireless operators and more in WWII - How It Changed Women’s Lives Forever. Fifty Shades of Archaeology takes a different approach, guiding audiences through different aspects of heritage – including medieval buildings and our human ancestry.
Three Fringe entrants invite audiences to join them as they seek to explore more about love, sexual relationships, memories, and differences. In Inverts, Matthew Drapper draws on the 1902 work of Havelock Ellis’s interviews with LGBTQ+ people, collected within the previous 100 years. His play reading offers shocking, sexy, romantic, awkward stories of love, desire and bodies. Joining the Fringe live from Canada, Hard Times’s Outside, In the Laneway, Under the Stars offers an autobiographical mélange of theatrical monologue, storytelling, and spoken word as it tells the tale of a gay, bullied small-town kid who found refuge in theatre. Rebecca Faro meanwhile explores themes of Dreams, Love, Grief, and Memories in her sensitive and deeply personal verses presented at Catching the Fall, the launch of her first book of poems.
A number of entries have a more local flavour, Fringe Award Winner Mark Gwynne Jones returns with a journey through the Peak District in word, film, and sound. Drawing on childhood experiences and encounters with shepherds, trogs, and mineral-miners, Mark’s funny and absorbing performance, Voices From the Peak, rediscovers the stories that connect us to the land. In Another Buxton - Alternative Histories of Our Town, “two old geezers”, Simon Fussell from BCA and Julian Cohen, local author, talk about hidden aspects of Buxton's history, telling the stories of the overlooked people, events and places that have shaped Buxton.
For those who enjoy mystery and suspense. Chapel Arts Creative Writing Group presents Murder Foretold offering disturbing, funny and imaginative stories, poems and more prompted by the line: “Someone here will soon commit a murder.” No one is above suspicion, even extra-terrestrials! In Stranger on the Run, Ian Gregory offers a story for grown ups. When a young man arrives in a seaside town in the 1920s, not everyone is welcoming to the newcomer. Chris Neville-Smith returns to the Fringe with new writing, Doctor Coppelius. Everyone knows the story of the doll Coppelia, and of Franz who believed her to be real, and of Swanhilda who loved Franz. But what of the doll's creator? The tragic villain from Delibes's ballet tells his side of the story.
More light-hearted offerings are available in the shape of How to Starve an Artist where Canadian poet (and Buxton Fringe Award Winner) Rose Condo serves up spoken word, sandwiches and small steps to cultivate creativity. Fringe regulars the Glummer Twins meanwhile return for an irreverent trawl through the eight decades that made them what they are today in The Beat Goes On.
Poets and writers from Buxton Spoken Words present their own work live and this year are pleased to feature excerpts from Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas. In an online event, The Monologue Project 2024, Strajanka Productions invite audiences to find the best monologue of 2024 by watching and listening to the video podcast, choosing from the shortlist of six and voting via email.
Fringe Marketing officer Stephanie Billen says: “This important category has been growing year on year. There is certainly a plethora of choice and variety in Spoken Word in 2024 and I can’t wait to dive in”.
To find out more, Fringe-goers can pick up a programme, see www.buxtonfringe.org.uk or download the free Buxton Fringe App.
The Fringe wishes to thank High Peak Borough Council, its Fringe Friends and the town’s many Fringe supporters and venues.
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